Sailing Glossary - Term Calorie

A unit of heat originally defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of water through one degree centigrade (the gram-calorie or small calorie), but this proved to be insufficiently precise. The 15° gram-calorie (cal15) is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water from 14.5° to 15.5°C, and is equal to 4.1855 joules. The kilogram calorie or large calorie (Kcal, kg-cal, or Cal) is 1,000 times as large as a calorie.